Cedar Point

And so it came to be that we arrived at Cedar Point. One of THE parks to go to if you consider yourself a coaster or theme park enthusiast. Pretty much every documentary program on the industry will vist this park. It is the biggest in the world in terms of number of attractions and houses around 16 coasters (depending on how you define them)

This was the view from the hotel window. Top Thrill Dragster, the first coaster to pass 400ft, standing quite majestic against the night time sky. We were going to have a nighttime ERS on this later but we would have an hour or two to get some of the rides out of the way before that took place. The view from the hotel was the only good thing to say about Breakers, where we were staying. The customer service was truly lousy. It's a shame because it had been hyped up as being THE place to stay, I'm sorry but the Econo-Lodge a few nights earlier showed true customer service doing all they could to help us enjoy our stay. Hotel Breaker's attitude was that they had your money and so didn't have to treat you with any proper kind of respect, a great shame!

The first ride of the night was on Magnum XL-200, the first coaster to pass the 200ft mark. We had a great ride accompanied by some really friendly riders who kept telling us about how great this ride was. Actually it was running really really well and I enjoyed it a lot. Usually on trips I don't mind where I ride, not being too picky about waiting for the front or the back. However on this trip I had wanted to ride in the front on both Kingda Ka (which I achieved) and Dragster so I headed over to the ERS a little early to ensure my place.

The evening ERS got off to a bad start when after queueing at one of two gates for a length of time we were told we were on the wrong one. After a little haggling for place I eventually got to the front for my ride.

What a ride it was. The launch is a heck of a lot smoother than Kingda Ka, and the ride was better as a result. In fact the whole Dragster experience puts this way above Kingda Ka. You can walk around the ride, which you can't do on Kingda. You get a much better idea of the speed because you can watch it from the Grandstand, you can't do this on Kingda. This has theming, Kingda doesn't really. An excellent ride with a superbly run ERS after which it was time to try to sleep as we had the whole of the next day to get around the rest of the park.

The morning started with an ERS on Millennium Force, or MILF as we had nicknamed it. This was the first coaster to break the 300ft level (do you see a pattern with this park and its records?) . Its an alright ride but not amazing. I guess if I had ridden this before Dragster I'd have been impressed more than I was. Perhaps I was starting to get coaster burn-out and having too much of a good thing.

Raptor is a really good inverted coaster and was a proper way to wake up following MILF but I was more impressed with the cheeky operations banter on this ride. "Raptor is an inverted coaster which means your legs swing freely. Please do not take this opportunity to kick the ride operators", "but I didn't", "I know you didn't sir, this was just a general announcement I make on a regular basis to the entire station".

A local school had come along to cheerlead and play music. I think there may have been a regional competition of some kind as there were lots of kids in t-shirts advertising various bands and choirs.

It's another of those pictures that most people take when they visit a park. Dragster shot through the legs of Power Tower. I wonder how many of those people included the bin in their shot however?

I actually rode the Corkscrew the previous night and had no intention of doing so again today. That's how good it was. I hadn't however taken a picture of it because it was so dark, which is why I took it the today.

Mantis is the park's stand up coaster, and its alright but not great. I'm not the greatsest fan of this kind of ride to be honest, although I will make an exception for Riddler's Revenge at Magic Mountain.

Apparently the original name of this ride was going to be Banshee and there was a whole lot of marketing paraphernalia that had to be destroyed when the full connotation of the name was discovered and the decision made to drop it. (Hearing a banshee's cry was an omen of an imminent death in one's family)

Demon Drop is the park's Freefall tower and has apparently been up for sale for over a year, although a buyer hasn't been found yet. If they did get rid of it would its count of coasters go down or stay the same? Another question for the obsessives to argue over. It was quite rough to from what I remember, even with me keeping my head back.

Wildcat wasn't a bad ride. It looks old and crappy but it rides surprisingly well.

Blue Streak was a pleasant enough wooden coaster. Although the park was busy (apparently this park is always busy) the queue times weren't too bad. For the most part operations were really efficient and moving the punters through the rides at a decent rate.

The park is right beside a really nice beach that I took a walk along later in the day. That's Magnum in the background.

Disaster Transport is an indoor bob-sled ride. This had one of the longest queues of the day and contained what I think is the worst thing to have in a park; hidden cattle grids. Just when you thought you might be getting to the front of the queue you'd enter an other room and see more queueing that you couldn't see before. The ride however was really fun and although short it was good enough to make you quickly forget about how long it took to ride it.

Junior Gemini is a kiddy coaster and the park enforce a rule that adults must ride with kids. As I don't have any of my own and have no plans to abduct any it meant that I had to ask the kids if I could ride with them. In the end I did get on the right but felt a bit bad for having done so.
If you're wondering what Martin is up to here, there was too much space between the kid next to him (yes there is one) and the lap bar so he had to ensure she didn't fly out.

The overbanked turn on MILF

It was at Cedar Point that I reached my 500, which I'm sombrely celebrating here. "Why didn't I make it MILF or Dragster or something other than Woodstock Express?" you may be asking. Well I'm not that fanatical about it, that's why. I didn't plan it this way, it was just whatever coaster I ended up on at the time.

[subsequent to this picture being taken I realised I'd miscounted and it was Gemini Jr that was my 500, ah well!]

Dorney Park and Cedar Point both had this trampoling thing where you could bounce into Snoopy's bum. Why you'd want to do so I have no idea, but it seemed popular with the kids playing in it.

Gemini is a really fun racing ride and when it opened was the first coaster to go over 100ft (Yep, Cedar Point had the full set). People move through the ride really quickly here, the operations were perhaps at their best on this.

New for 2006 is Skyhawk the largest version of the Screamin' Swing ride built so far. It seats 40 people at a time and is about 120ft high. However this was by far the most disappointing attraction in the park as the program they were running it on was extremely short, I can only assume to keep the people moving through it at a decent rate. You'd barely swung one or two times at the maximum height and you brought to a stop. Very disappointing!

Proof that the restraint can fit all body types.

Iron Dragon had been down for sometime during the day so as soon as we saw it running again we headed over to it and got it out of the way. Again the ride operators were quite amusing on this ride insisting on say "bye bye" several times as the train left the station.

With the new ride, the park have decided to not go for the 500ft record, choosing instead to head off in what they're calling "a whole new direction". Rumour has it going underwater, but we'll have to wait and see. It is obvious that there's a whole load of landscaping going on and when welcomed to the park, the guy there made mention of a coral area, which would add to the rumour.

Mean Streak was alright but a little disappointing considering its size. I would come to find out later that this would be a good big wooden coaster when compared to some others. Again kudos to the ride operators who launched a train then immediately stopped it to confiscate a camera that someone had smuggled on. We asked the operator if we could take the camera and run their film out with stupid pictures. She said it would be a great idea but she couldn't.

The park has a train ride that takes you through some bits of the park that you can't get to on foot. They've themed a lot of it with skeletons for some bizarre reason, but it did explain the gunshots we could hear around the park. Some of the sets feature skeleton gunfights.

Dragster by day, just as impressive as dragster by night.

MILF

Some nice 50s theming. I couldn't work out why the mechanic was working on an engine on a car that is just theming, and which doesn't actually move.

As with the Corkscrew ride I had ridden Wicked Twister the night before, and really liked it a lot although I preferred Steel Venom as it had one twisting spike and one straight that they'd stop you on. This featured twisting at both ends so they couldn't do the stop trick on this.

Again the ride operators were superb on this ride. At one point the operator put out over the tannoy "If you're happy and you know it clap your hands", and when you clapped your hands she launched you. Very childish but a lot of fun!

The green forceful monster that is Raptor

Unlike Skyhawk, MaxAIR was running on an excellent program, perhaps the longest I had ever experienced on rides of this type. It seemed odd that the approach was so inconsistent between these rides. Perhaps its related to how popular the ride is, although this did have a decent number of people queueing for it too!

MILF and Dragster taken from the wheel.

A little Cedar Point Pano made from 3 pictures this time.

In the evening we had another ERS on Magnum, but I didn't go to it. The pace of the trip coupled with the heat had taken its toll and after having a little nap at 6pm, I chose to stay in the hotel room to take the opportunity to catch up on sleep. Yep, I arrive at perhaps THE best park on the planet and I take the opportunity to spend it asleep in the hotel room. From what I've heard I wasn't the only one that did this however.

Cedar Point is a great park and I think its far to say THE best park on the planet, definitely in terms of customer service (although being told you're on America's Roller Coast did grate after the 200th time). Not all the rides are world class but there's a good mix and unlike some parks in the UK, there's a decent mix of rides to eat the public up. They don't just rely on the large number of coasters that they have. Top Thrill Dragster was one of the highlights of the trip for me. I knew that I would come to prefer that to Kingda Ka, and the park proved me correct.

South to Wyandot